Driving Instruction

 Teaching my daughter to drive may be the hardest thing I’ve ever done as a parent, and that includes the 33 hours of labor followed by the C-section with which she entered the world.  And I have to confess that I don’t think it’s her.  It’s me.  If I were teaching me to drive, I would stop the car, get out, walk around to the passenger side, remove me from the car, and beat me to a bloody pulp.  I am SO annoying.  So annoying that I give hitherto unfathomed depth and meaning to the word.  I know it, and yet I can’t help myself.

She handles it pretty well, considering.

I won’t even bother to write much about how my right leg has a permanent cramp from shoving my foot to the floor on the imaginary brake; I understand that’s a common phenomenon for parents.  And I suppose many parents have caught themselves involuntarily crying out, “Brake!” 

I don’t do that.  I yell, “Brake!  Brake!  BRAAAAAKE - for the love of God and all that’s holy!”  At every intersection.

The other night as she overcorrected on a turn, and overcorrected, and overcorrected again, I lost my head.  I am ashamed to say that I actually screamed out, “Jesus Christ, what the hell are you doing?!!!!”  I was so rattled that when we got home, and someone dropped something, I yelled it out again - “Jesus Christ!” 

Her brother, a complete smart mouth, said, “Oh, is Jesus Christ here?” 

My daughter replied, “Yeah.  He was in the car, too.”

So she still has a sense of humor.  She’s holding up way better than I am.  I have a crick in my back because I spend every trip leaning over to the left, away from the door on my side, because in my opinion, she is far too close to the parked cars.  In theory, I know that expecting her to keep at least 6 feet away from them is unreasonable.  In practice, it’s the only way I can handle it.  I have developed a nervous twitch that starts whenever she’s in the vicinity of the car keys.  I have no fingernails left on my left hand; I’ve chewed them all off.  On my right hand, they still look pretty good, because I’m so busy hanging on to the door handle for dear life that I can’t get at them. 

On the plus side, my relationship with God is much stronger lately, in spite of the little “J C” incident, because I spend so much more time in prayer - every driving lesson.